Friday, November 15, 2013

How to Combat Road Rage

I don't usually give in to road rage. I mean, I scream a lot in my car, explaining to oblivious drivers what idiots they are, but I've never gotten myself into a confrontation before. It was close yesterday. Good thing OYT and his sweet, quirky personality was along.

To begin with, I wasn't happy about the errand, and it was getting close to rush hour (yes, our small town has one, on this particular street we were traveling.) Traffic is   S L O W. I have no idea why it's all plugged up, but as I get cut off by someone who thinks it's really important to be one more car further along, OYT says,

How about a fun factoid to distract you?”
Um, OK Sheldon, go ahead.”
Did you know that womens' tear ducts are shaped differently than mens', so that their tears will roll prettily down their cheeks while a man's tear will roll discreetly down the side of their nose?”
Why no, I didn't know that. That's a good one. WHERE did you learn that?”

Unlike most fun facts he shares, I'm not thinking this one was from Mythbusters...

It's (name of YouTube channel – I can't keep up, the subscribe to so many.)”

Cool. Got anymore?”

Yes, but I'll save for the next time some idiot pisses you off.”
That didn't take long. By now we can see that it's down to one lane (in each direction). I move over, but many cars just keep driving. You've seen them, they're exempt from the rules, will drive all the way to the barricade, then barge in front of you, who planned ahead and was already safely in the appropriate lane, and force their way in front of you.

If you eat polar bear liver you'll die of vitamin A poisoning!”

That was just in time because I've just been waiting for seven yahoos to barge in, and some idiot is letting people turn left in front of him, and they're almost getting hit by the CONTINUOUS stream of special folks who've seen the yahoos and decided to join them. So we now have idiots on all sides.

I start to seethe, and scream, and glare. OYT starts singing “Soft Kitty.” It's from Big Bang Theory. Sheldon' s mom used to sing it to him when he was sick, and he makes his friends sing it to him even though he's an “adult”.

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purrrrrr.

I melt. And relax. We continue on in traffic. I've had to take some alternate routes because the traffic signal was out at one of THE major intersections and they decided oh so brilliantly to get their cherry-picker trucks and block off two lanes of each major road, direct traffic around the trucks, and fix the lights DURING RUSH HOUR. I understand the directing traffic, absolutely necessary, but wait until you've gotten all those people out of there first, then bring in your equipment. Instead, you've snarled half of town.


We're almost to our destination when we're stopped by a train. A long train. A little hand sneaks over to my shoulder and a soft voice starts singing again. 

~Tina



P.S SMK (handy nick-name tab above) who reads all my posts, immediately had the answer to the Squirrelmageddon dilemma.

"Of course there are squirrels everywhere.  We had a flood.  They're looking for their families, a new home, they're running all over the place!  Mystery solved.



12 comments:

shelly said...

You made me laugh. I can tell you why are traffic is suddenly backed up everyday. The SNOW BIRDS come to Florida around this time and clog up the roads until May,

Hugs and chocolate,
Shelly

Unknown said...

Love the song1
When a slow car is in front of me, and I know it is about to turn, I will wave my hand as if to use "The Force" like a Jedi to get them to turn faster. This has it's side effects. My wife and kids think im crazy, but it allows me to feel like I'm in control and they will turn faster.

Brian Miller said...

ha i like your methods of stress relief...i def get upset at times....usually i turn the music louder..ha.

Andrew Leon said...

That's why I want a big hammer that comes out of the top of my car. Like a cartoon punishment.

JoJo said...

That was hilarious!!! Well not the road rage part...omg I suffer from that with idiot drivers here too.

Shannon Lawrence said...

Hmmm, I need someone like that in the car when I'm driving. Two things: I HAVE gotten into an altercation when someone tried to kill us with stupidity not once, but twice (and that one was me out of the car, so I'm not counting car-involved altercations...I have a short temper). Second, I move over so I'm in two lanes blocking the lane that's ending once I'm a certain distance from the end of the merge lane. I've found that the people behind me will catch on and stagger themselves, as well. Then all the jackasses that purposely rush to the front are stuck and must move over. I will gladly let people over within a certain distance of the warning sign, but when it is obvious they're being jerks who think they're too good to merge like the rest of us, I'm done.

So yeah, I turn into this guy when people piss me off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZAZ_xu0DCg

Not something to be proud of, but I will also be the first to go out of my way to make sure someone can get in who is using their blinker and needs to get over. I always leave a space at an intersection or turnout for people to pull out when the traffic is bad, and I'll slow down to let someone over. I'm not all bad. ;) It's just those people who intentionally ignore the warning signs that their lane is ending.

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Oh Oh Tina .. well that was some journey - sometimes the wonders of our maintenance teams. We get rush hour here too .. I think school hour is the worst!!!

Glad we've solved the squirrels - but we haven't had floods here .. on the other hand we just have squirrels, but not squirrelmageddon ...

Happy peaceful weekend .. Hilary

Annalisa Crawford said...

Other drivers are one of the reasons I've never learnt to drive. Of course, a second reason is I'd probably be one of those idiots, so I'm doing the world a favour. Glad you had the right company on your journey!

Carol Kilgore said...

I may need to borrow OYT sometimes on a moment's notice. Maybe if I just remember this post, it will do the trick.

Love BBT!

Unknown said...

That was so interesting about the tear ducts and polar bear liver! (What does OYT mean?)

The things we do to amuse ourselves in traffic. Good post, Tina!

M.L. Swift, Writer

Mina Lobo said...

Aw, poor Tina! But LOL about "Soft Kitty!" It totally makes sense that this tune would take the edge off a person's anger. I've used it, at least once, to help calm myself down after some kind of night-time freak out, so I could go to sleep. Kudos to OYT for having your back!

T.F. Walsh said...

Road rage is aweful... I see it all the time and not fun. The soft kitty song is awesome and bound to calm down any crazy road rager:)